MTGNexus

I'm not opposed. We are running Sol lands, after all.

I completely forgot.. we got sol lands in this format. So it's easier to cast here. Well, should provide good info on their hand, or at least should bait out a counter if they have one. :>

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on other things. What kinds of decks have you already tested this against?

I feel we should have a pretty good chance against most aggro, and could race other combo. Although a little worried about control decks..

I don't remember

hmm, I do remember you beat High Tide with it. So the deck has potential.

It's a little sad, so hard to find people to play with these days, because corona still around..

Indeed.

Just remembered, I've played this against...uhhh...Maverick! That's the one. Also Sneak & Show, Burn, and an Experimental Frenzy brew. Burn kicked my dick in, but the rest of the match-ups were fairly favorable for me.

nice, you won most of them.

was that loss to Burn from their normal playing? Or did they bring in a sideboard card to win?

It was a typical Burn win. My only counterplay to Burn is getting out Thought Lash before they can finish me off, or winning faster, which doesn't always happen.

Legacy Burn is fast enough to race combo decks I guess..

a few questions..

1. Were you hit by price of progress?

2. Did they cast an Eidolon of the Great Revel, was it a problem for this deck?

1. We played a few rounds, and it did come out a handful of times.
2. They did not cast it, so I can not assess.

hmm, any new cards from Zen Rising and Kaldheim that can be tested in the deck?

I haven't seen anything in particular that's caught my eye. Did you have something specific in mind?

The Fluff wrote: ↑

3 years ago

hmph.. all this oracle combo talk hyped me up. Would have been better if paradigm shift is legal in modern, so I could build a deck for it.

Or maybe it's too strong for modern? But modern does not have Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox, Ancient Tomb, and City of Traitors.. so it would be slower there.

A thought: You could use Balustrade Spy and Undercity Informer with more mana rocks than lands to try to push you closer to decking out, if you wanted to run this in Modern? Though Modern kind of %$#% on fast mana strategies, especially with SSG getting banned, just now.

so far, have not seen anything which could be added to our deck..

thanks for the idea on the Spy and informer. Will remember that.

and yeah... fast mana is a declining strategy in modern. SSG was able to evade the ban for years, but he was eventually hunted down and banned. lol

Played against an Assembly-Worker deck with a lot of resilience. Unfortunately for them, a T2 Thought Lash was basically the end.

Further thoughts, since I'm having difficulty falling asleep: I think Crystal Vein might actually be better than City of Traitors in this build. I've paid close attention to the times I have played it, and considered how City would fare in its stead. On every single occasion, Crystal Vein was a better option, because we want to be dropping a land every turn if possible (barring baiting caution from an opponent who might be wary of FoW), and sometimes, in this deck, you get a hand you can't pass up but don't always have all the blue mana you need to power things out. With that in mind, it opens the avenue of play of putting down a Vein and drawing into an Island or fetch without having to miss a land drop, which, in a combo deck like this, can be (and often is) the difference between going off in time and losing. In every instance of my testing where I needed the sol mana from what would have been City, I was able to sac Vein for the double colorless, effectively emulating City's presence, and pull off whatever I was doing without a net negative. If you're sacrificing it for the double mana, you're winning within a turn, anyway, and nothing the deck runs requires you to have that extra mana out beyond initial cast. Blue mana is often more important, anyway. There was maybe a single time where I had to hardcast FoW? I didn't sacrifice Vein to do so, that said, but it was only possible because I had already had Vein out, which was able to lead up to further land drops to enable it. which City would not have been able to provide. With Vein, you can play a little more loosely with how you order your land drops, and that's been a godsend on numerous occasions - and it's not like it's any more vulnerable to Wasteland than City is.

tl;dr: Crystal Vein > City of Traitors, or at least, it is, in this deck.

I'm not certain how much this needs to be a Sol Land deck of any type. You aren't running things like Chalice, 3sphere, or Back to Basics to really take advantage of generating 2-3 mana on turn one. Your most efficient iteration of the combo requires 1UUU (shift + oracle), and your only double-colorless costs are on backup pieces like Thought Lash and Lab Man, plus Intuition. The only time I see you needing to really use a Sol Land is if you EOT Intuition into untap and go off, but that's still dicey because you're basically locked into Intuitioning into the Oracle + Shift line since you run fewer than 3 of Lab Man and Lash.

Have you considered Saprazzan Skerry or Svyelunite Temple instead? You're slower on turn one but you don't have a ton of turn one plays anyways, and they produce UU when you need it to go off.

I'm not sure I was aware of the Temple being a card; I'll pick up a playset and see how it runs. That said, my issue with both that and the Skerry are that they both EtB tapped. The fast mana from sol lands has been a godsend on numerous occasions, and honestly, if I could get Svyelunite Temple exactly as-is without EtBing tapped, I would swap Crystal Vein for it in a heartbeat. I ran the R version of Skerry in Sneak & Breach for a while, but often found the deck folded to Wasteland while putting me behind a turn's worth of mana due to not being able to use it on the turn I played it. The biggest advantage of the sol lands is definitely for things like Lab Man and Thought Lash, but as you said, Intuition is also a critical part of this deck for when the draws just aren't ripe. Either way, I'll definitely test out the Temple. Thanks for the suggestions!

Alright...I did it. I bought a playset of the Temples, and I also shelled out for the sideboard on the last page with Sorcerous Spyglass replacing Pithing Needle.

good choice on the Spyglass. Getting a look on the opponent's hand is a strong effect.

If I run the Temples, Wasteland is going to be this deck's boogeyman. How prevalent is Wasteland in the meta, currently?

Edit:

Wildfire393 — Today at 7:42 PM
The best deck is UR Delver which I believe still packs an entire playset
According to mtgtop8 it's the 4th most played card in the format with 49% of decks packing at least one
The best three aggro decks are UR Delver, Death and Taxes, and UWR Ragavan Landstill all of which run 4 (25% of the meta)

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Sooo that answers that. Maybe I'll test the Temples when they're less prevalent?

I can't contribute much on info about wasteland prevalence. The legacy scene has completely died down in my country. It was on life support pre-corona, now it has virtually disappeared.

hmm, looking at the info from Wildfire. So I guess Ragavan also is being used now in Legacy. The monkey is strong.

Yeah, it seems that way. I'm kinda getting a hankering to rebuild S&B, despite not having the ability to play Legacy frequently...ugh.

Part of me also wants to revisit Depths' Shadow. That was a fun and silly brew.

Depths' Shadow.. is that another version of this deck?

Nah, it was a Turbo Depths/Death's Shadow hybrid build I came up with. Lots of fun.

Played some more Oracle's Shift, today. Went up against and crushed Elves and an Experimental Frenzy brew. Went up against Grixis Storm and Sneak & Show and lost, though most of the matches against the latter two were close games - it was just an unfortunate matter of either not having two combo pieces at the same time, or one of my pieces getting countered when I needed it. Seeing that happen like that almost makes me want to pick up a third Thought Lash, because, honestly, I've been using it more than Paradigm Shift. It's a reasonable bit slower than Shift, but it's far more resilient, and my friend forgot I could use it to completely nullify his Grapeshot damage, which was pretty funny. I also did a cheeky play and used it to stop my own Ancient Tomb damage, at one point.

Svelyunite Temple was great, even in the matches where I sided in Back to Basics (vs. Sneak & Show, which was a hella effective stall) where it was a dead draw after putting BtB out. I'm not sure if I want to make the swap to Temple permanent, given Wasteland's prevalence in the meta - but against non-Wasteland decks? It did work.

I haven't had a deck with a proper sideboard in a looong while, so siding out in the latter two match-ups was a tad difficult, and I almost feel like I should put a copy of Echoing Truth in the side? Not sure, though. Thoughts?